Quiet Conversation
by katie janeway
Summary: Kathryn sits for a brief talk with Chakotay.


**_Disclaimer: Never in a million years will they belong to me._**

The coffee sat, untasted, in the cup in front of her. It had long since gone cold, yet she still kept it there, untouched. She supposed maybe she was expecting something; perhaps some part of her wanted him to notice it and chide her for it. He always had before. She sighed, voicing an excuse anyway.

"It's my only vice, Chakotay."

She proceeded to tell him about the others. Harry was about to lead the first deliberate mission into the Delta Quadrant, his ship equipped with a working slipstream drive. Starfleet had managed to work out most of the bugs, but to be sure, Harry's ship, the _Triumphant,_ would only be going on a short journey, two months at most.

Harry had come to her with some reluctance over the trip, she confided. "Not because of facing the Delta Quadrant, but because of how much he wanted to go back. They all do, Chakotay. At some point. Tom and B'Elanna say their quarters on Voyager were more comfortable than the apartment they have now. They're working on Edex, by the way – that new space station. Tom runs a bar, and B'Elanna leads the maintenance teams for ships. I guess all those years of repairing Voyager didn't make her sick of Engineering after all, like I once thought they would." She smiled, a crooked grin that she was painfully aware he didn't see. "Miral is participating in all of her school's activities that her parents will let her do. And she is obsessed with the twentieth century, just like Tom."

"The Wildmans want to visit Neelix. Naomi has a little brother now that she wants him to meet. The Doctor would like to lead a ship to the Delta Quadrant, captain it himself, or even just take a shuttle. After all, he's a hologram – he can take as long as he wants going through, provided he has a power supply. But he won't leave the crew. He won't even go on Harry's mission, though Harry asked him to. Tuvok's the only one who hasn't come to me expressing a wish to go back. But I know he misses it. We all do." She paused. "Seven….Seven left a few months ago. I don't know where she went. Starfleet wouldn't tell me." She laughed, hollowly. "I'm an Admiral, and her former captain, almost as good as her mother, and _they won't tell me_. I don't even know if she's alive," she admitted, quietly.

"You know," she began, and she finally picked up her coffee, and took a small sip. "The Admiral wanted all of us to have a better life. She wanted me to have a better life. So she got us home early. I suppose, for the first few years…she got her wish. But now, I would give anything to be back on Voyager. Anything. This may be home, Chakotay, but it doesn't feel that way."

She smiled bitterly at him. "There were a lot of things we were supposed to do. Harry was supposed to find Lily and marry her; Icheb was supposed to attend the Academy; The Doctor was supposed to write more holonovels. And you and I….after you and Seven broke up, I thought maybe our chance had come. But I guess too much time had passed, hadn't it? We weren't the same people we had been when it all first started. I'd gotten harder, more bitter and, yes, more selfish and stubborn. I admit it. You…I hardened you, too, all those years of being my first officer. I'm sorry for that. I didn't realize what I had done to you, until after we got home, when I noticed that you'd returned to being the angry Maquis I first met. We'd lost our chance. We lost it when I first told you "no.""

She got up slowly, knocking the coffee over as she did so. Some of it slopped onto him.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, and quickly pulled a cloth from the basket beside her, to mop him up. She threw back into the basket when she was done, and the cup as well. The thermos she'd brought the coffee in sat just beside the basket, and she packed that as well.

She glanced at him again. "They miss you, Chakotay." A single tear came to her eye. "I miss you." She turned abruptly. Even now, she couldn't let the mask slip. She took a moment to get under control, then turned back and gathered her things.

"I'll be back next month," she said softly, not knowing if he heard her. And she let herself out of the room, glancing over her shoulder at the man who simply sat there, his eyes empty, and his mind long since gone with no hope of it returning.


End file.
